The Darkroom of Damocles (32 page)

HERO OR TRAITOR
?
(from our special correspondent)

Of all the insalubrious episodes that have inevitably come to light during the post-war administration of justice, the mysterious case of tobacconist O. is by no means the least significant. We have the impression that the investigation, in so far as it has been effectively conducted at all, is sorely lacking in logical reasoning.

O. took part in various underground missions during the German occupation. Keen observers did not fail to notice that sooner or later everyone who had dealings with O. fell into German hands, while O. himself always managed to escape in miraculous fashion. Indeed, shortly after his arrival in the liberated provinces of our country in April 1945, he was taken into custody by the Allies on suspicion of high treason.

O., for his part, denies everything, claiming that a man named Dorbeck was behind it all. This Dorbeck has never been found, despite repeated efforts to trace him. According to O., Dorbeck is a Dutch officer working for the British, and by coincidence they resemble each other like two peas. No lack of coincidences in this affair! A
third mysterious figure has since surfaced: one Egbert Jagtman, likewise a Dutch officer and likewise bearing a striking resemblance to the apparently chameleonic O. Because a photograph published in the press (of O.? of Dorbeck?) was recognised by none other than Jagtman's dentist! Prior to that, O. had already claimed to have sent secret documents to the said Jagtman's address, which he alleged had been passed to him by Dorbeck.

Whatever the case, it is now generally accepted that Jagtman himself is no longer alive and that a body found in a German mass grave is indeed Jagtman's. Is it fair to infer from this that the third pea in the pod, so to speak, has been eliminated? Possibly.

There is more.

According to O., Dorbeck asked him to develop some photographs, which he, after having heard nothing from Dorbeck for four years, posted to him. Only four days after doing this, O. was contacted by a young lady by the name of Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel, who called herself Sprenkelbach Meijer. She identified herself with one of the pictures O. had put in the post, claiming that it had been given to her in England. But the photo had still been in O.'s possession three days earlier. She also claimed to have been put ashore the previous night at Scheveningen, where she had gone to stay with an aunt. But by June 1944 Scheveningen had already been evacuated by the Germans, and the beach was heavily guarded in anticipation of the Allied invasion. Moreover, at that time communications between England and occupied Dutch territory were hardly good enough for a photo to be able to travel there and back in two days. A mystery … Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel was in effect a British agent, but how she had obtained the picture O. could not explain. Did
the man called Dorbeck exist after all? Was it he who played it into Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel's hands (in Holland, presumably), instructing her to tell O. that it came from England? Theories abound, but what is the truth? Not long after this, Elly B. S. was caught by the Gestapo, and later shot. To make matters worse, it transpired after the war that the Germans possessed multiple copies of the relevant photographs …

Whatever the case, the possibility of Dorbeck's existence should not, in our opinion, be ruled out.

But then where is he?

The answer to that question appears not to be forthcoming from the authorities. We, for our part, believe it is incumbent upon us to take the matter in hand.

Women

Numerous women are implicated in the present affair. One is O.'s girlfriend, named Mirjam Zettenbaum, who went into hiding during the war as Marianne Sondaar. She is now residing in Palestine and efforts to contact her appear to have been unsuccessful. Why is this? Why has she not come forward to clear her former lover's name?

The judiciary have shown remarkably little concern about this situation, possibly with good cause, as we shall see.

Mirjam Zettenbaum owes her life to the treachery of O.

She was apprehended by the Germans in Leiden along with O. Being Jewish, she was promptly imprisoned in the Westerbork concentration camp, and her fate in a German
Vernichtungslager
would have been sealed had O. not saved her.

O. saved her life – this is, by all accounts, not in dispute.
For the Germans had come to the conclusion, on the basis either of O.'s statements or their own findings, that the arrest of O. had not dug out the root of the plot. They believed (or knew???) that although O. was behind bars there was still someone at large who matched O.'s description! So they said to O.: tell us who this person is, and we will ensure that your girlfriend Marianne comes to no harm. Thus they persuaded O. to betray Dorbeck.

There can be no doubt about this, in our opinion. O. led the Germans to the address where Dorbeck was staying. The house concerned was rented by a student of theology named Moorlag, an old acquaintance of O.'s: he had previously been a lodger with the O. family at Voorschoten. No one in the world knew O. better than this Moorlag, but he too is dead. His body was found in the street a few days before the liberation, round the corner from where he lived in Amsterdam … Coincidence? By no means! Moorlag is dead, and Dorbeck certainly existed,
but he too is dead
! Both betrayed by O.

Hidden truths

That the judiciary has failed to make these simple deductions may seem strange, but it is well to bear in mind the following. No prisoner ever tells the whole truth during interrogation. Nor will those conducting the inquiry, in their turn, reveal all they know, in the hope of drawing out the suspect. Thus O. lied to the Germans, the Germans lied to him, and afterwards O. did not tell the whole truth to the British or the Dutch, while the Germans, of course, do nothing but lie when interrogated by their former enemies. They have no interest in helping the Dutch authorities, or in bringing to light the historical truth, their sole commitment being to save their own hides.
Consequently we recommend taking no statement whatsoever at face value, but rather bringing reason and logic to bear in fitting together the pieces of this puzzle.

Love

The Germans kept their promise to O.: his girlfriend was not sent to Germany. They expedited O. himself, disguised as a female nurse, to the liberated south. He was driven there by a uniformed German officer in a small car: a DKW. This car was later found in Dordrecht containing the body of the officer, who had been stabbed to death by O.

These facts were conveyed to us by the priest of the church of St Ignatius at Dordrecht, with whom O., still disguised as a nurse, had sought refuge. What better way would there be for O. to remove all suspicion from the minds of the Allies than by killing the German officer?

However, this is not all. On his journey southwards O. paid a visit to his tobacco shop in Voorschoten, where his legal wife Maria Nauta, his first cousin and seven years his senior, was still living. This woman had a relationship with a Nazi sympathiser named Turlings, which was common knowledge in the locality. On the day of O.'s journey, his wife was found dead in her shop. She had been stabbed. Local residents reported having seen a German officer and a nurse leaving the scene in a car prior to the discovery of the body.

We are aware of the objections to our line of reasoning: that all these circumstances give rise to complications that are beyond the judiciary's remit, who are, after all, concerned exclusively with establishing irrefutable proof against O. They have no interest in composing his biography – a daunting venture by any standards, given the
complexity of the affair. Whatever the case may be, O. is not entirely innocent, but neither is he as guilty as some of our countrymen believe. He started out in good faith, and that his wife and her Nazi lover betrayed him is beyond all doubt. In so far as O. was a traitor himself, it was out of love for his friend Mirjam Zettenbaum. It was to save her that he denounced Dorbeck and Moorlag to the Germans. Small wonder that Dorbeck has not turned up.

Hoping to come out of this alive, O. seized the opportunity to take revenge on his wife, no doubt with the half-formed intention of starting a new life with his girlfriend after the war.

Let us return to our first question: why is Miss Zettenbaum keeping silent in Palestine? In the light of the foregoing, does this question merit further investigation? No! The answer is obvious.

She is keeping silent because there is nothing she can say in O.'s defence. Assuming she were actually able to prove that Dorbeck existed, she would at the same time be proving that he was betrayed by O. She is silent out of love for O.

It is probably best for O. if she remains so.

To: Miss Mirjam Zettenbaum

In a kibbutz

Palestine

Camp Eighth Exloërmond

19 October, 1945

Dearest Marianne,

It was only last week that I heard, to my amazement, that you are still alive. I was told by the police. My joy is impossible to describe. This is the first chance I have had to write you a letter. I was convinced you were dead. I went to visit you in the Emma Clinic in Amsterdam, on 6 April. The matron said you couldn't see anyone. But they did let me see the child. Oh, Marianne, I can't tell you how I cried, and now that I'm writing this I am crying again. I have nothing, not a single thing, left from the days when we were together, and they were such happy days. The happiest days of my life, and nothing will ever be the same again. Oh, Marianne, I can't bear to think of you being so far away, but I don't think I could still make you happy.

Things have gone terribly wrong for me. I am a prisoner. The war has ended, all the occupied countries have been liberated, but I have yet to have a moment's freedom. I have been through so much, more than I have the
strength to tell you, but my suffering is without name. I stand accused of treason. The basest, most evil motives are attributed to me, and everything I do to try and prove my innocence only backfires. Everyone who could have testified in my favour is either dead or impossible to trace. And you know as well as I know – and as my other close friends knew – that I was acting on Dorbeck's instructions at all times. I'm sure you remember my telling you about Dorbeck, that night at Labare's, before the place was raided by the Germans. You consoled me, remember? I told you about my absolute dependence on Dorbeck, that without him I was nothing, less than nothing, even. You contradicted me, you said I was a person in my own right, with my own worth.

But, dearest Marianne, things have turned out otherwise. Dorbeck has vanished. Dozens of attempts to track him down have been made, so far without success. There is no trace of him. Sometimes I think he must be dead, then I think the British must be hiding him. And so what I told you was true: without Dorbeck I am nothing, without him coming forward to explain my actions, everything I did in the Resistance can be twisted and distorted into crime and betrayal.

I am not at all well. I have a fever. I cough day and night. I am not being badly treated, but I rarely, if ever, see daylight. The interrogations sometimes go on all night, but I still can't sleep on the other nights. And yet I am privileged, because I have a cell to myself. The prison camp is an old milk factory. The other rooms are filled to bursting with all sorts of lowlife, former members of the SS, provocateurs of the Sicherheitsdienst and other traitors. It makes me laugh sometimes to think of the company I am in, and then I say to myself: why make
such a fuss? It's all a big mistake, just one insane coincidence on top of another, that's all. Dorbeck could turn up at any moment, and then everything will be fine.

But I must confess, Marianne, that I sometimes get more worried than is good for me, which is why I want to ask you this: couldn't you write to the Public Prosecutor of the Special Court and tell them I was definitely in contact with Dorbeck during the German occupation? That I talked to you about him, et cetera. That he really exists. Because the people dealing with my case are so badly informed it sometimes seems they are out to convince me that I made him up.

Turlings, the Nazi who reported me to the Germans, is the only person still alive to have seen Dorbeck. It was after the shooting in Haarlem, at Kleine Houtstraat 32. He saw a man in a grey suit. He thought it was me. When he saw me wearing white shorts a few minutes later, he said: you got changed very quickly! He had seen Dorbeck instead of me.

But I can't very well ask them to get a statement from a traitor like that, can I? What would the judge think of me? So I'm keeping quiet about him.

And, Marianne, please write back. I would so love to know how you are getting on in your kibbutz. They say you people play recorders and tambourines out there. Perhaps you haven't forgotten me yet. I hope you don't think I abandoned you. At least now you know why you haven't heard from me. Once I'm free I want to try and save some money (except I don't know how, as the tobacco shop no longer exists), but if I can lay my hands on some money I'll come over to you, Arabs or no Arabs.